Life Skills for Children

Seeing your child grow up so quickly brings out the need to coddle and spend every precious minute with them. And as much as you hope to keep your child under your care and protection…..forever, at some point, you will need to come to terms with the fact that your little one needs to grow up to be an independent and self-efficient person.

But you don’t have to rush with that just yet. Start slow with instilling in them some necessary life skills for children that will come in handy as they journey along through the course of life.

Six Life Skills for Children you should teach right now

– Phone numbers and Addresses – Getting your child to remember their home address and their parents’ numbers can be a crucial skill and an important safety measure. Remind your toddler that whenever they make a new friend in school/ class, get their parents’ contact details, email addresses, etc. This will teach your little one to always have a record of those they meet and help you keep track of those they converse with.

– Emergency contacts –Besides knowing your family contact details, have your child memorize authoritative emergency details such as the police and ambulance. In this way, should your child land in a grave situation and you’re unable to access your phone, your child would’ve already alerted the authorities.

– Cleanliness and hygiene – Clean themselves up after sports or any outings, wash up after meals, clean their surroundings after their work is done, place their dishes in the sink, and eventually wash their own dishes. Laundry too is an important life skill- Start off by teaching your toddler to deposit soiled clothes in specific baskets and gradually move onto explaining the working of a washing machine. Make sure you have a step stool nearby and walk your child through the process- how to measure and add detergent, choose the settings and start the machine. And remember safety first always. It is best to wait till your child reaches the age of five before you teach them how to do laundry.

– Time and Time management – Teach your toddler to read time and incorporate it when teaching them to organize and plane themselves—homework at 4 pm, playtime an hour later, Toddle time at half-past 6, Involve a fun planner or attach a schedule on your refrigerator to teach them organization skills too! Remember that teaching kids how to read time is an incremental process, so start slow and build from there.

– Money Management –Teach your toddler the importance of money, provide them with an allowance, introduce the concept of budgeting, start off, get them to write their daily expenses down, and use the list to teach them how to save and spend wisely. Teach them to count their notes and learn the currency values too!

– Self Safety – DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS, recognizing familiar faces, setting a common point for when they get lost from parents, pointing out who to reach out to when they find themselves in a fuss- a security guard, the police etc….are all ways to teach your toddlers to help save themselves when they are in trouble and have no backup.

Life skills for children take time to develop. But, it is a learning process that needs to begin early. Ensure your child starts learning some of these from an appropriate age and introduce more measures that you deem fit, as they grow.